Epoché

Epoché ( epokhē, "suspension") is an ancient Greek term which, in its philosophical usage, describes the state where all judgments about non-evident matters are suspended in order to induce a state of ataraxia (freedom from worry and anxiety). This concept was developed by the Pyrrhonism school of philosophy.

Epoché plays an implicit role in subsequent skeptical thought, as in René Descartes' epistemic principle of methodic doubt. The term was popularized in philosophy by Edmund Husserl. Husserl elaborates the notion of 'phenomenological epoché' or 'bracketing' in Ideas I. Through the systematic procedure of 'phenomenological reduction', one is thought to be able to suspend judgment regarding the general or naive philosophical belief in the existence of the external world, and thus examine phenomena as they are originally given to consciousness.

Epoché plays an important role in Pyrrhonism, the skeptical philosophy named after Pyrrho. Pyrrhonism provides practioners with techniques for achieving epoché through use of the Ten Modes of Aenesidemus, the Five Modes of Agrippa, and the Pyrrhonist maxims. Pyrrhonism is mostly known today through the writings of the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus whose surviving works appear to be an encyclopedia of Pyrrhonist arguments for inducing epoché across a breadth of philosophical and other intellectual issues of antiquity.

In phenomenological research epoché is described as a process involved in blocking biases and assumptions in order to explain a phenomenon in terms of its own inherent system of meaning. One actual technique is known as bracketing. This involves systematic steps to "set aside" various assumptions and beliefs about a phenomenon in order to examine how the phenomenon presents itself in the world of the participant.

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